Get the Name of the Dog

My task is, by the power of the written word, 

to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, 

before all, to make you see.

— Joseph Conrad

In The Elements of Style, Strunk and White pooh-pooh lazy writers—the majority—because they're so often satisfied with imprecision.

You see their slothfulness on display every day:

• "The Searchers is the greatest Western ever made."
  
  
• "The number of Americans diagnosed with 'broken heart' syndrome has steadily risen in the past 15 years."
  
  
• "Some records from The British Invasion in the mid-'60s can be very valuable."

By saying so little, sentences like these tax readers' minds. They squander readers' energy in guessing what the writer means to say.

Good writing avoids imprecision by drawing word-pictures.

Word-pictures comprise concrete details—specifics—that allow readers easily to imagine the world the writer seeks to depict. 

Anything less is filler. Eyewash. Baloney. Horse hockey.

• "The Searchers is the greatest Western ever made" merely tells you the writer likes this cowboy movie.

• "The number of Americans diagnosed with 'broken heart' syndrome has steadily risen in the past 15 years" merely tells you that incidents of a weird disease have increased.

• "Some records from The British Invasion in the mid-'60s can be very valuable" merely tells you there's demand for vinyl recordings by bands like Peter & Gordon.

Precision, on the other hand, would have told you, among other things, what distinguishes The Searchers from all the other hundreds of Westerns; how fast cases of "broken heart" are accelerating—and whether the disease affects a lot of people, or only a few; and which mop-top bands' records are hot.

Lazy writers favor the generic, as Victorian sociologist Herbert Spencer said in The Philosophy of Style; and, because they do, they always leave readers guessing. They should, instead, aim to produce "vivid impressions" with their words.

Writers should avoid, Spencer said, abstract sentences like "When the manners, customs, and amusements of a nation are cruel and barbarous, the penal code will be severe." They should write instead "When men delight in battles, bullfights, and gladiatorial combat, they will punish by hanging, burning, and the rack."

Spencer calls the use of vivid word-pictures a "thorough maxim of composition."

Writing coach Peter Roy Clark calls Spencer's maxim "Get the name of the dog" (or the "Fido Theorem").

"Such was my affection for this writing strategy," Clark once told an interviewer, "I wanted to use it as a book title. 

"Anticipating the literalism of SEO, my publisher decided the title should reflect what the book was really about. In the end, Get the Name of the Dog became Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer. 

"Get the name of the dog" does appear in Clark's Writing Tools as Tool Number 14. But it's much more important.

"It ranks as Number 1 in my heart," Clark said. "Every strategic move I’ve shared over 30 years derives its existence from the Fido Theorem. 

"'Get the name of the dog' stands, for me, for the whole. In other words, if the writer remembers to get the dog’s name, he or she will be curious enough and attentive enough to gather all the relevant details in their epiphanic particularity."

Got an email to write? A memo? A report? 

Get the name of the dog.

Tom Foolery

The mob has no memory; it can never comprehend when its own interests are at stake.

― Alexandre Koyré

Despite his pivotal role in our nation's founding, slaveholder Thomas Jefferson is about to be cancelled.

Watching the wholesale cancellation of the Confederates, mossbacks like myself knew, in our hearts, the founder's days were numbered.

Being White and powerful, his erasure was inevitable.

Mobs are just as oppressive as governments, and faster acting.

And have no doubt it's a mob that's gunning for Jefferson, a multiracial one comprising angry Blacks, Latinos, and Asians. 

When it comes to condemning Whites' hypocrisy, this mob's unstoppable.

Hypocrisy like Jefferson's no doubt merits condemnation.

But cancellation?

Jefferson deserves better.

Jefferson's cancellation lumps the Founding Fathers with the Confederates "in a way which minimizes the crimes and problems of the Confederacy," Jefferson scholar Annette Gordon-Reed told The New York Times.

I agree with her.

While Jefferson owned slaves, he didn't extol slavery; he called it, in fact, a "moral and political depravity" he'd abolish were abolition "practicable."

For my own part, I've tried for years to plumb the depths of Jefferson's hypocrisy and finally found forgiveness in historian Henry Wiencek's dark biography, Master of the Mountain.

In Master of the Mountain, Wiencek makes clear that Jefferson, our celebrant of liberty and equality, kept slaves because he could not bear to lose Monticello to his creditors, nor see his daughter and grandchildren plunged into poverty. 

Had he been frugal (he spent a fortune he didn't have on books, groceries, and fine wines) and smart about business (farming and manufacturing), Jefferson well might have freed his slaves. But he was neither, and he didn't.

Instead, Jefferson ran up enormous debt and remained, his whole life, a slave to his slaves, earning a four percent profit from breeding and selling them—a "bonanza," according to Wiencek.

Jefferson, a failure at farming and a klutz at commerce, sold out his ideals for a soft life.

And for his sin—monetizing people—the mob has moved to cancel the author of our Declaration of Independence, decrying all statues of Jefferson as symbols of "the disgusting and racist basis on which America was founded."

But that's the way of mobs. 

Forgiveness demands acceptance, something mobs suck at.

Mobs are really only good at vengeance.

So here's my prediction of who's next on the block.

Jesus Christ, founder of the most oppressive institution in the history of the world.

It's inevitable.

Welcome the twilight of the idols.

Reunion

Vive memor leti, fugit hora.

— Persius Flaccus

William Shatner has nothing on me.

He rocketed into space last week; but I rocketed back in time.

I attended my prep-school class's 50th reunion this weekend.

My impressions of the event are ajumble, because so many long-forgotten faces swam into view all at once and in so brief a time. 

Until Friday afternoon, I had not stepped foot once in Jersey City for all the 50 intervening years, nor spoken to more than four or five of my 200+ classmates from Saint Peter's Prep.

That's one hell of a long gap.

But a score of hours just aren't enough to bridge five decades' distance. 

And so I found, throughout the weekend, that behind the façade of reminiscent smiles, nods, handshakes and chatter, an ocean of memories boiled—memories that at some moments threatened to swamp me. 

(The feeling of being swamped was quite appropriate to the locale, given that that neighborhood of Jersey City, Paulus Hook, is barely above sea level and catastrophically floods during big storms like Hurricane Sandy.)

I'm convinced nostalgia, in tiny doses, is good for you. 

Most psychologists would agree.

But it can be a little unnerving in large spoonfuls.

A 50-year class reunion is a megadose of memories.  

Nonetheless, when I left Jersey City on Sunday afternoon, I felt fine: relatively young and healthy; sane, solvent and sociable; and grateful—exceedingly grateful.

I left grateful to the fates and to my folks, who'd given me a wonderful gift: the chance to pal with a bunch of overachievers during my four most-formative teenage years. 

What a powerful preparation for adulthood. 

And what sweet memories.

Sweeter still was the realization that I was able to attend the reunion at all.

So many of my classmates and dear friends—the solemn list was read aloud during our "reunion mass"—are dead and buried.

They missed a great party.

Vive memor leti, fugit hora.

Live mindful of death, the hour flees.

HAT TIP: Thanks go to classmate Mike Healy. Absent his urging, I would not have attended my class reunion.

Diehard

I was whitewashed and wasted professionally.

— Bob Dylan

Urban Dictionary defines a "diehard" as a fan who's "completely 100% obsessed." When it comes to Bob Dylan, that fits me to a T. 

There are millions of us Bob Dylan diehards around the globe.

Upon meeting, we can size up one another's standing as Bobcats readily, merely by asking whether our devotion extends even to Dylan's early-'80s albums like "Shot of Love," "Infidels," "Empire Burlesque," and "Knocked Out Loaded," released during a period of his career he would later call "wasted."

If the answer's yes, we know definitely we're dehards, companion members of the species Dylanus invictus.

So it's like a diehard's Christmas to listen to the latest Bob Dylan album, "Springtime in New York," Volume 16 of "The Bootleg Series."

On five CDs, "Springtime" packages nearly 60 alternate versions, rehearsal tracks, and outtakes from Dylan's albums of the early '80s, with the result that you are immersed for over two hours in works of unmistakable lyrical and melodic genius.

Stripped of '80s synthesizers, gated reverb, and digital overengineering, the recordings sound live and "unplugged," like classic Bob Dylan tunes. Some stripped-down versions of the songs are so well performed, they put the haphazard versions released in the '80s to shame.

The alternate versions of many of the songs, moreover, offer you a chance to follow a tune's development, and to ponder why Dylan would recast lyrics another songwriter would have sold his soul for.

All in all, "Springtime in New York" will remind you how vastly rich Dylan's song catalog is—even his catalog from the early '80s. 

NOTE: Should you want a distilled edition of the five-CD album, a two-CD edition is available for one-fifth the price of the "deluxe" one.

Strawman

There is a strange interdependence between
thoughtlessness and evil.

— Hannah Arendt

I'm tired of Conservatives' relentless use of the strawman.

A "strawman" is an argument that substitutes an opponent's statement with a distortion thereof, in order to "disprove" it.

A strawman is fallacious. It takes its form in this manner:

Liberal: Black lives matter.

Conservative: My opponent says Black lives matter, but White lives don't. I'm sorry, all lives matter. He's dead wrong.

The Conservative in this case has distorted the Liberal's claim by assuming (1) it excludes all lives but Blacks' and (2) that to "matter" means to "prevail."

To prevent use of a strawman, you need to present a steelman.

A "steelman" is an iron-clad argument. It makes the strongest possible case for a claim and prevents your opponent from distorting your position.

It might take this form:

Liberal: Blacks suffer from systemic racism in this country. Our entire way of life devalues Black lives, and puts Blacks at a material disadvantage—socially, economically, and politically. Without conscious effort, we thwart Blacks' attempts to live peacefully and well, and treat them as if their God-given lives didn't matter. But, in their own eyes at least, they do matter.

Conservative: So, you're saying the system is rigged?

Liberal: Bingo!

A steelman grants the opponent the benefit of the doubt and assumes his intentions aren't evil.

Sadly, that's not always the case. And so you often hear debates like this:

Liberal: Blacks suffer from systemic racism.

Conservative: Blacks don't suffer racism—that's ancient history. They just want preferential treatment. The whole idea that there's systemic racism is Marxist hogwash.

Telegraphic counterarguments like the one above betray both the evil intentions and shallow-mindedness of their makers, two common qualities of Conservatives today; qualities that put persuasion out of reach.

As philosopher John Stuart Mill said, "He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of it."

If he only had a brain!